Previous Education
Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich
Research Interests
Very broadly, I am interested in the following topics: Thinking; its relation to nature; the concept of the world; philosophical method.
In my dissertation, I inquire how Kant and Hegel each try to develop an a priori conception of nature. Kant does so by reflecting on how knowledge is possible for a being that needs sensibility in order to have knowledge. He thereby establishes that nature must accord to mechanical causation, but also that human freedom is not thereby excluded. Hegel agrees, but holds that more has to be said about how exactly freedom can be realized in nature. To that end, Hegel develops a different philosophical method, by means of which he establishes a different conception of nature – one that positively includes solar systems, organisms, and human freedom as exhibiting a different form than mechanical causation.
Dissertation
Working Title: Knowledge, Nature, and Freedom – Kant and Hegel on the Limits of Human Knowledge and Its Implications for the Concepts of Nature and Freedom
Committee: Robert Pippin (chair), James Conant, Matthew Boyle and Christian Martin (LMU Munich)
Recent Courses
PHIL 29200-03/29300-03 Junior/Senior Tutorial
Topic: Kant on Causation
The concept of causation is fundamental to the world and our cognition of it, Kant claims. Saying that experience itself would not be possible without that concept, Kant rejects Hume's claim that causation is not warranted by experience. That is to say, Kant argues that the concept of causation is constitutive to our mind in experiencing the world. However, having defended the concept of causality to be fundamental to world and mind, Kant faces the problem of determinism. This problem can be put in the following way: if everything that happens has a cause in nature from which it follows with necessity, then everything that happens is caused by that cause in nature and cannot be caused by an act of the mind like a decision. Moreover, it may seem that everything that will happen is already determined to happen in a certain way. Kant addresses this problem by showing that it rests on a misunderstanding about causation–namely, that the fundamentality of natural causation does not actually entail that everything that will happen is already determined. Seeing this furthermore makes available the position that there being a cause in nature to everything that happens does not exclude there being a different form of causation like in decisions.
In this seminar we will engage in a close reading of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason centered around the concept of causation. In the first part, we will retrace Kant's argument for the fundamentality of causation to the world and our mind. To that end, we will read the introduction to the Critique of Pure Reason and select parts from the transcendental aesthetic and the transcendental analytic. In the second part of the seminar, we will engage with the issue of determinism as treated by Kant in the antinomies of reason. Centering the discussion around the concept of causation allows for a substantial engagement with a centerpiece of Kant's philosophy that is doable in one quarter.
Meets with Jr/Sr section. Open only to intensive-track and philosophy majors. No more than two tutorials may be used to meet program requirements.